If you’ve been working on getting your website to rank in Google or any of the other search engines you’ve probably realized that you need great content that is keyword rich; plus backlinks.

Backlinks are critical.

Maybe you’ve looked at top sites ranking for the keywords that you would want to rank in their spot for and thought “I wonder where all of their links come from?”

Well in today’s lesson I am going to show you a nice and easy way to find a couple useful things:

What keywords your competitor ranks in the top of Google for

What backlinks are pointing to their pages for those keywords

Knowing these 2 things will allow you to know roughly what type of backlinks helped them rank where they are and also uncover many of the keywords you hadn’t thought of yet!

Now, first let me be clear, there is not a free way to do this. Back in 2006 you could. But in this day and age nothing is free. There are numerous tools that do this and many are extremely expensive. The one I am using for this is Keyword Canine. It’s cost is $27/month or you can get it cheaper with a yearly subscription. It’s a worthwhile investment if you plan on doing a lot of keyword research (like I do).

There are a number of reasons I am using this tool. The main reasons being that the tool is not expensive in comparable terms to the others and it’s easy to use. By the way Keyword Canine has a ton of other uses and training make sure to read the entire page here and even see some of my walk-throughs here.

B. Select the max number of search results you want. This uncovers this amount of keywords that the site is ranking for

C. Click explore ranks

After you click explore ranks it will bring up a page that has several details.

A. This tells you how many keyword they have ranking in the 1st page of Google

B. You can dig into their entire backlink report from here (don’t do this yet)

Below that box is the list of keywords and where they rank in search. This is extremely useful! This basically unlocks keywords that you might not have considered before.

A. This is the URL that is ranking in search. Note, it’s not just the homepage here

B. These are the keywords that are ranking for the corresponding URL

C. This is where the keyword ranks in search. With roughly 10 results per page in Google anything with a 1-10 is on page 1, 11-21 is page 2 and so on

D. This is the estimated search volume that the keyword gets monthly

E. This is the estimated traffic that this particular site gets for the particular keyword. You’ll notice that this site doesn’t have a lot of traffic for many of the keywords.

This information is extremely helpful. It’s important to note that you’ll want to eventually have all of your keywords ranking on page 1 of Google to actually reap the traffic from the keyword. As you see above the only keyword that is bringing this site traffic is the one that is on page 1.

Now, scrolling back up you can go run the backlink report.

A. Click Run Backlink Report

This will pull up a report and you’ll be able to break down all of the backlinks that the website you’re investigating has coming back into it.

A. Select the last 60 days. This gives you a more accurate look at their backlinks

B. This allows you to limit how many backlinks will come up in the report. Most of the time 500 will be fine

C. This is how many backlinks are coming into the URL

D. This will bring up the info screen. Clicking this is what you want to do to view the individual backlinks so you can see the exact URL the backlinks exist at

E. This will let you download the the backlink report to your computer so you can investigate it on your time

So from the above you can see that you can find your competitors backlinks and various keywords that they are ranking for. This will give you a pretty good overview of what keywords you should target on your posts/pages at your site.

Using option D from above you can follow along now.

You can go through line by line and even visit each URL.

A. This is the URL the backlink is at

B. This is a rank on a 10 point scale. 1 being weak, 10 being strong.

C. The anchor text of the backlink

D. How many links are pointing to this exact page

E. How many backlinks are pointing to the site in general

How To Use This Data

What I specifically look for is how tough all the backlinks are. You want to see a lot of lower numbers here. If you see a lot of 6-10’s it’s going to be some tough sledding to compete with them on their rank. But if you see a bunch of low numbers it should be much easier.

From here you can visit each site and see if it’s worth putting your link at. You can contact the site owner and see if they’d be interested in having you put a guest post on their site (with a link back to yours of course) or you just get an idea of how tough the competition is before you start really going after backlinks yourself.

So Why Does This Matter and Why Is Finding Your Competitors Backlinks Important?

This information is extremely valuable. Knowing where your competitors are getting their backlinks can help you go after the same links or similar ones. With Keyword Canine you can also see how strong the link competition is which will allow you to seek out stronger links and guest posting partners.

I know in this day and age it’s easy to want to skip doing all of this and just building up a socially following but search is still critically important.

Make sure you put it to use and keep working on your site!

Have you used this before? Do you have another method you’re using? Plan to use this method? Share below.

I have a GREAT tutorial on finding hot niche market trends. I decided to create this tutorial because I often get asked how to find a hot new niche before 1 million other people jump on board. This can be a great way to uncover a hot niche before it’s over-exposed and being a early adopter in the new industry can help give you a voice.

Several people have told me I have an uncanny ability for uncovering hot niche markets with ease. Well, let me share a few little tricks I use to do this.

I’ve discussed some parts of this before but I am going to take you a down a slightly different road here.

Step 1: You Need An Idea

Now, it’s important to note that at some point you’re going to want to do some keyword research on any niche market that you find. However, in this tutorial I am just going to show you how to know if it’s growing or declining.

You’ll also want to dedicate a little bit of time to light reading each month. I like to scope out sites like INC, Business News Daily, Forbes and Bloomberg Business. The reason I glance at these monthly is because you’ll often find article entries like this. Notice the wealth of knowledge on upcoming or rising markets.

I can usually easily find several dozen new markets anytime I search at the websites listed above alone!

Step 2: Search In Google Trends

Google trends is the best place to gather Intel on any niche market. Through this tool you can see if it’s on the rise, decline, holding steady is is a stellar breakout.

Breakout means it’s moving up fast and did so recently.

Watch me investigate “essential oils” below.

A. Type your keyword here

B. Change the setting via any country (I usually leave it on worldwide)

C. This shows the term you typed in here.

Next, you’ll see a series of charts and graphs pop up.

This first box will show you a line graph of the terms rise or fall in search. Look at that massive spike from 2014 – 2016! This graph will give you a visual look at how popular the industry is becoming. Notice that this market has been around for a while but it wasn’t popular until recently. This is the EXACT kind of market we want to find!

This next graph shows the countries who are interested in this market. United States and Canada are #1 and #2 but don’t discount the ones in the 30-50 index as well.

The final graph on the page shows the terms on a scale of 0-100. This will help you decide the popularity of the term. You can also see various related breakout terms in the industry as well. Just click the little button that says “rising” to get that data. Anything listed as a BREAKOUT is hot!

Step 3: Researching The Trend

Now that you know how to do that, what can you do with this data?

Well now you can plug it into any keyword tool. You can use paid keyword tools like Market Samurai, Keyword Canine or you could simply just use Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool or SEOBook Keyword Tool. My favorite way is with either Market Samurai or Keyword Canine because they’ll make your job even easier.

Using Keyword Canine I this is easy. (By The Way I Have A Full Review Of Keyword Canine Here).

A. I entered the search term here.

B. I checked how competitive it is here (39/100 which is decently easy!)

C. Tons of searches at 9900/month – wow!

Watch Me Do The Above On Video:

As you can see from just a little work I was able to uncover a pretty new hot trend that is growing, that has plenty of searches and isn’t incredibly difficult to rank for. Make sure to watch my tutorial for how to find easy to rank for keywords as well. You can combine these tactics for awesome results!

So there you have it. Seem pretty easy? It is.

However, sometimes you can be in research mode for hours. But, you can come out with an amazing new and fresh niche market this way.

If you like this and it helped you please share it with your friends on social media.

We’re all looking for that low hanging fruit aren’t we? You know, those keywords that lack crazy competition. Well today I’m going to show you how to find them through a walk-through and then even provide you with a video to demonstrate.

Whether you’re a student of Niche60 already, going through my Free 7-Day Affiliate Marketing Training or it’s your first time here but you’re into building your online business this post should be something you put into action immediately.

Today I am talking about finding low competition keywords that you can rank for in search.

What Are The Point Of These Keywords?

Low competition usually means easier to rank for. But, I am going to show you some things that will make you determine their profitability as well! Easy to rank + make more money = awesome.

I think long term you want to do more with your website than just rank in search for low competition keywords. However, that doesn’t mean that finding low competition keywords shouldn’t be on your “to-do” list.

I think, especially early on on your website, low competition can be a great thing but you can also build an Instagram following, various other forms of social media or even an email list. It doesn’t matter if you’re building an affiliate marketing business or building an eCommerce website search rankings are still extremely beneficial.

For now our focus is easy to rank for keywords so you can grow your sales.

So Follow Along With Me Here

First make sure you’ve went through my keyword research training at some point so you understand the purpose of keywords and how to do initial keyword research.

Also understand that finding these keywords can be useful for anything from posts on your website, articles, guest posting or even for posts on additional sources like medium.com. Basically, with these keywords you can use them virtually anywhere that you want.

Next you need to have a special keyword tool. For this tutorial I am use Keyword Canine. You can get a monthly or even a yearly subscription. If you cannot afford a keyword tool right now you’ll need to save up as you make some money or save money by reducing your own personal expenditures(read about saving money for your business here).

Save these keywords and download them to your computer (those features are right there inside Keyword Canine – see my full review here.

Then create content for your websites based on those keywords.

If you do this every month you should have a website brimming with great long-tailed keywords that can bring you extra traffic from the search engines. Remember to ALWAYS create great content in the process for the best results.

Tell Me What You Think!

Share your thoughts below or ask a question if you’ve got one. Do you plan to use these tactics? Already doing this? Are you doing something you like better already? Do you think you could find low competition keywords this way?

Also if you love this stuff please share me on with a friend on social media. Also make sure to come like my new Facebook Page as well.

Today’s post is extremely important. How do I know that? Because hundreds of you told me that simply not having enough money to start a business online was a huge problem.

So today I am going to show you a solution that you can use and put into practice today.

First you need to determine how much you need to start your business and then have a little bit extra aside.

So if you wanted to start an affiliate marketing business like I teach in Niche 60 you’re going to need about $20.00 to start and about $10.00/month to keep it running. Anything else you spend on it is strictly optional.

The Cost Breakdown

In the first month you’ll need to buy a domain: about $10.00/year & hosting about $10.00/month for hosting.

So for 1 year of business you’ll want to have about $130.00 Which can be paid monthly.

You’ll also want to budget in the cost of a good program. Many online programs will cost you a high monthly fee. However, Niche 60 is right now just $99. But, you’ll want to budget that in. So to run your first year in business might cost you around $230.00 total if you end up buying training (recommended).

Now obviously I do not know your situation, but, most people can afford this. If you think you cannot I am going to show you why you really probably can in just a moment. Again, do not be offended if you really can’t, I know some people live on a every tight budget and it is more difficult. But, many of us waste in excess without knowing.

Now If You Think You Can’t Afford It – Let’s Look At A Few Statistics…

Note: All info will be U.S.A based because I couldn’t find world-wide statistics for this.

Expenses That Add Up

And A Note: The Average American Spends Almost As Much Going Out To Eat As At The Grocery Store! [4]

Yikes! Those numbers are truly scary. I am not even going into some of the bigger issues such as student loan debt, credit card debt, cigarette/alcohol expenses and issues of that magnitude. These are just simple controllable expenditures.

Also this list is not meant to condemn you if you’re wasting a fortune. It’s just to show you that with a little bit of savings, building that online business is actually really attainable.

Save A Fortune With These Tips

Save On Coffee

Now I am a huge coffee drinker; I honestly love the stuff. I am not a coffee snob by any means but I do like a decent cup of coffee several times per day. But what I found staggering was the fact that the average American spends about $1100/year buying coffee out at coffee shops.

So here are some stats that will blow your mind. Let’s say you like a decent cup of coffee ( I am going to assume you’re not buying the typical run-of-the-mill grocery store coffee. So I upped the prices in the example below.

Here Is What You Can Buy Good Coffee For

8 oz. bag = 42 cups $4.40 (.11/cup) Above Average Blend

12 oz bag = 62 cups $10.00 bag (.16/cup) Premium Blend

These are rough estimates for decent blends. Obviously, depending on the brand it can vary.

Now even if you drink 6 cups per day of a premium blend that’s only going to cost you .96/day or $350.00/year. That’s a savings of 749.00 over the averages shown above. That alone is enough to build a business on.

Also ditch the K-Cups! Paying .50-$1.00 for watered down coffee is a waste in my opinion and it’s not going to save you any cash as opposed to getting coffee out. Plus, as a coffee drinker I can honestly say that I do not like them. Just my own personal opinion.

But, if you work a job currently you might be wondering how to get your mid afternoon coffee if you’re not buying it out? Simple. Buy a nice stainless steel thermos that keeps your coffee hot for 8+ hours. I know it’s not as good in a thermos 8 hours from making it but it’s actually probably still better than most run-of-the-mill coffee shops. Plus, it saves you a ton of money.

Final Coffee Drinker Pro-Tip

Only brew what you’ll drink. I think coffee is an easy thing to waste because we often do not think about what we’ve paid for it. So if you’re going to drink 2-4 cups then only put that amount on. If you decide to have more later then you can process another exact amount.

Entertainment Savings

I’m not going to lecture you on having fun. I am an introvert so what some of you may find fun, I may not. So I tend to find myself spending less money on outside entertainment anyway. But, I do find myself enjoying time with my family and friends still.

However, with all of the things we have nowadays it’s still easy to spend a fortune on in-home entertainment if you’re not careful.

So I have a few tips to share.

If you have a family wife/husband/kids try to find fun things you can do that you all have in common and aren’t that expensive. I think as a society we’ve gotten away from some of the basic, simple forms of entertainment.

Here are a few really great inexpensive things to do.

Playing sports together

Playing video games together

Playing board games together

Playing cards/darts/

Hiking/outdoors stuff/campfire

Cooking together – This makes dinner creation easy as well

These things can all be fun and won’t cost you much. Plus some things you only need to buy once and you’re set. Again, I’m not trying to get preachy here but instead offer simple helpful advice.

Saving On Cable and Satellite

18,000 channels and not a good thing on, right? We’ve all been there. So, change it.

Now it’s easy to cut your cable bill. I.e. you could get a few services like Netflix, Amazon Instant Video (prime account), Hulu and not to mention the recently opened Youtube Red and still spend a fraction of that monthly cable or satellite bill.

Now, I’m not saying you should do that but I am saying that you could.

Honestly, in the past year I’ve taken up reading even more and barely watch T.V. The amount of knowledge I’ve gained far outweighs the slight stimulation that I got from watching T.V. programs.

Now if you still enjoy T.V. shows consider keeping the lower tiered packages to keep them while spending less or, again, switching to something like Hulu.

Hey, plus if you want to take up reading I have some great insight on that.

Interesting Take On Reading

Reading on subjects that are interesting to you will make you more knowledgeable on that subject. This is especially great news if you’re studying a niche you’re looking to start a business in.

The more you read on a subject, the more likely you are to master that subject eventually. Yes, practice is key but reading and gaining more knowledge sure helps.

If you can’t sleep at night, reading will help relax you. Don’t read on your Kindle though, it won’t. Go the old fashioned book route.

Reading allows you to access more of the creative side of your brain than watching T.V. With reading you’re forced to visualize things that the author mentions. Now, I haven’t personally researched this but I can tell you that if I read for a couple of hours I also tend to be more creative in my processes thereafter. This is a huge benefit in business.

The Average American Spends Almost As Much Going Out To Eat As At The Grocery Store

That statistic sounds insane to me. But, I like to cook. You can make a a steak that taste better than most restaurants at home for a fraction of the cost and make it taste better. Seriously.

Go price that New York Strip in your local market versus the price of a New York Strip on a menu in a decent place.

Learn to cook at home and learn to make things you love. You’re going to save a lot of money and ultimately you’ll be happier. If you feel like you don’t have time to cook read my article about saving time when you’re busy. This should open up enough time to squeeze in some cooking and work on your business.

I want to touch on another subject quickly. Not only will you spend an enormous amount of money eating out it’s also typically not as healthy. Restaurants tend to over-salt and over-sugar foods. They obviously do this to enhance taste but the fact is food doesn’t need a ton of salt/sugar to taste great.

I know this site isn’t the best place for health advice but it’s just an added benefit of cooking for yourself.

Saving That Cash

The above examples were just a few small tweaks that could make a big difference in your life. Of course, there are hundreds of other ways to save and with a few simple searches on the Internet you can find them.

I want to close by saying that by making some small changes you’ll realize that you have more money for a business than you ever did. This makes spending a few hundred bucks on your business easier. Plus, this is your own business that you can build for you and your family for years to come.

Finally, my parting words for this post: It’s not what you make, it’s what you spend. Remember that.

How are you saving? Do you have any additional tips? Do you have anything you’re doing right now that is making a huge difference? Going to use some of these tips? Share below.

Also, it would make me extremely happy if you’d share this post on social media with your friends and family. It also makes you extra awesome in my book.

I think as entrepreneurs it’s easy to sometimes overlook the great niche ideas that sit right in front of your face. In this training today, I am going to give you a bunch of great niche ideas to get you started on your business. Additionally, I am going to show you some sites that are already in these niche markets that I think are well put together. These examples should help kick-start your creativity.

Whether you’re into affiliate marketing like I train about here and at my complete course here or you’re into creating your own brand like I train here (coming very soon – it’s not open yet) you can use these ideas as your own niche or you can branch off of the ideas to create something entirely new. Find a niche market you like below. After looking through my niche ideas below, the goal is to simply get you motivated to think about what niche you’d like to get into not necessarily these exact niche examples.

Getting In Shape Niche:

This is an evergreen niche that will NEVER get old. Sure it can be competitive but if you really learn the subject this is something that you can get into and make a great living at.

Here are a few people that are doing an amazing job teaching you how to get in shape while making money in their niche doing it.

Muscle For Life – Focuses on muscle, lifetime fitness etc. Great stuff. Plus, he not only promotes things as an affiliate but creates his own products. This is a great business model.

Muscle Old School – Brent does a great job here of focusing on real strength training using old school methods.

The sites above are just to give you some examples. However, if you want to really niche down you can do your keyword research and find a niche based on getting in shape easily.

I.e. let’s say you drill down and go after strength training for older men or women. Perhaps you want to focus on fat loss or a specific segment of the market like getting a 6 pack set of abs, stronger and leaner arms or even how to have a great butt. Just in the weight loss industry alone, there are thousands of potential niche variants.

Gardening Niche Market

This niche is vast just like getting in shape. This can range from small to large gardening to organic and so on. Check out some of the sites that are doing this very well.

Gardeners.com – They don’t just sell the products they discuss using them and gardening methods in posts. Great site for the gardening enthusiast.

Away To Garden – This site is brilliant. You can tell when you arrive there that she really knows her stuff. Look at the information she’s sharing – it says TRUST.

Again with a little bit of effort and keyword research, you can dig into this topic and find a niche idea that makes sense to you. The key is just to get busy and make sure you’re passionate about it.

Do You Like The Niches Ideas So Far?

I have some more interesting niche ideas for you below.

The Organic – Everything Niche.

As people become more concerned with GMOs (genetically modified organisms) the entire organic segment will grow larger. Over the last decade it has already grown exponentially and I think it’s going to continue this trend.

This opens up the door for the niche segments of the organic industry. I.e. organic skin care, organic baby care, organic foods, specialty organic diets and more. Using a tool called Keyword Canine, I get over 1033 keywords! Inside those 1033 are potentially hundreds of niche market ideas waiting for you to tap into.

Here are some people who I believe are doing a great job in the organic niche markets.

Organic Candy – They are selling their own brand here but they could easily write about this niche. If they weren’t selling their own they could also be affiliates.

Being A Mom or Dad Niche

I always liked the idea of the mom/dad blogger niche. I’ve never decided to create in this niche myself but it’s vast and there is a never-ending list of topics you can discuss in this niche; not to mention an unlimited amount of profitability. If you’re a parent think of all the things you’ve learned as being one. Think of all of the things you had to figure out. Guess what? Millions of other people are looking for the answers you’ve already discovered!

Mom Blogger – This site is massive and well kept. Also great work on social media here.

There are so many other great parenthood blogs out there but I just wanted to share a couple that had a different “edge” to them.

Additional Things To Help Get You In The Niche You Want To Be In

I hope you enjoyed me sharing some niche ideas that I not only find interesting but evergreen. I wanted to make sure to share examples so you could see how people are creating content in these niche markets and give you some ideas to get you started.

There are literally millions of niche markets out there and it simply takes time, research and deep thought to generate your own niche ideas until you find the one that is perfect for you.

Once you find a niche you really like then it’s time to get started so you can be on the road to making money online. The best thing you can do for yourself is sitting alone in silence and think of a niche you’d like to be in, one you’re good at or one you’d love to learn.

Additional Resources

Here are some additional resources that will help you discover a great niche.

Finding Your Passion – This is my advice for how and why to find your passion. Finding a niche that matches your passion is a winning combination. If you don’t currently have a passion you can simply get into a niche that you think you’ll be passionate about. Once you learn more about the niche usually that passion can blossom.

Keyword Research Your Niche – This will help you discover how many people are searching for this information and show you who is also in this niche already.

Like the niche ideas, I shared here today? It would mean a lot to me if you’d share this post on social media with your friends. This helps people who need the advice and it helps me spread the word so I can keep creating the information that you want to see here!

The title of this post is actually incorrect and I’ll explain why. The question of “how to get things done when you have no time to get things done” is usually a false presumption of lack of time at best.

The cold hard facts say we have 24 hours in a day to get all the things we need to get accomplished, done.

Yet, some of us get far more accomplished than others.

We have more time than we believe we have because we’re very good at wasting time or inviting distractions to waste our time unintentionally. So, in a sense, you’re usually stuck believing you have less time than you really do.

Let me show you 3 proven ways to save time and simply get more things done even if you feel like you’re already time strapped.

Not Fancy: But It’s My Journal

Keep A Journal

Journaling. This one is actually pretty new to me. However, I’ve been practicing a form of journaling for years without really knowing it.

So what is it? It’s simply the act of writing down what is trapped in your mind daily so you do not forget and allows for better mental clarity.

This can be things such as feelings and general thoughts to things that you’re looking to accomplish on a daily basis.

The few minutes you spend writing in the journal can save you hours of time later.

This saves you from wasting time by allowing quicker recall of whatever information you need.

How many times have you sat in front of your computer screen, notebook or work space and wondered what you needed to do next? With a journal, you’ve got that information at your fingertips.

I estimate that by keeping a journal I am able to save myself around 30-40 hours per month that could have been easily been wasted. If you start journaling you’ll no longer wonder how to get things done when you have no time because you’ll open up so much extra time for yourself.

Here’s how I use my journal for time management and to accomplish big things.

In the morning during my cup of coffee, I take 5-10 minutes and I write down anything I dreamed of, thought of immediately upon waking up and I state exactly what I am going to accomplish for the day.

I then work throughout the day to achieve everything that I stated I would accomplish.

At night, not long before bed, I write down in the same daily entry things that I accomplished, thoughts, feelings and then I list things that I want to accomplish the next day.

Yes, this means sometimes things get entered twice but this instills them into my brain even more. Upon waking the next day, my mind is pretty much made up of what I want to do and it makes a journal entry even easier to write.

Some of the greatest thinkers in history have journaled including guys like Edison and Tesla who accomplished world changing things. This would have been an impossible task without a journal.

If you ever want to dig a bit deeper into journaling check out this post on Medium.

Deep Work

Deep work is a term coined by Cal Newport and quite frankly if you’re not practicing it, you’re missing out on some big time savings.

Deep work can easily be summarized in the words of Mr. Newport as follows: “Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time.”

I’ve discussed some of the things he delves into in the past but what he discusses and teaches is a “game changer” for those of us that live in a distracting world.

Deep work involves learning what is important and what is not and then how to direct your overall focus.

Deep work involves turning off all distractions but, more importantly, it involves being conscientiously aware of ourselves and what actually pulls us away from accomplishing the most important things of your life and where you’ll be ignoring the smaller things such as answering an email, checking Facebook or Twitter, reading texts messages etc.

When I need to get critical things, like creating a new blog post, working on a new course or building a new business I am constantly in Deep Work mode. I highly suggest practicing it and adapting it to your daily life.

Some things I constantly ask myself before I start my day is as follows:

What is the most important task I can do today?

What is the least important task?

Which will help me achieve my end goal faster?

Using my journal, I create a list of the most important task of the day to the least important task of the day. This process takes a total of 2 minutes but saves me so much time.

I then proceed to get the most important task done as early in the day as possible and I tackle the least important tasks near the end of the day or during a break point. I.e. if I need to answer a couple of emails I’ll do this on a break from deep work mode or during my down time.

Practice deep working and I am sure it’ll pay off for you.

Quit Complaining

We all have things in our lives that we don’t want to deal with. Some of us are more fortunate than others, some of us start with more money and some of us have outside problems that are difficult to deal with. These outside problems can be things like family issues, health, important obligations and so on.

But one of the biggest time drains is complaining to everyone about these problems.

First of all, constant complaining that life isn’t fair makes you look weak to everyone around you. Nobody wants to hear your daily complaints, nor has time for it. We all have enough problems going on in our lives as it is.

Now, don’t mistake asking for advice or sharing your troubles with someone as complaining. It’s sometimes beneficial to you and to your friends to have open discussions about your troubles. I am talking more about the constant whiner; same problem, new day, without attempting at resolve, type of person.

Secondly, it wastes so much time. It’s better to simply list your complaints in your own journal and then spend a few moments meditating on a resolution or praying about a resolution if you’re into prayer like I personally am.

That’s really all I have for this segment, but, because I’ve seen so much time wasted in complaints (and have personally wasted myself in the past) it’s something I had to mention. By removing complaints from my life, I have freed up enormous amounts of time that can be used for anything else.

Put Time Savings Into Practice

There are numerous other time-saving things that I didn’t discuss today but if you put the 3 previous things I mentioned into practice you’ll free up so much time for yourself you’ll be able to work on that business more or do great things for yourself and family that you never thought were possible.

Make a commitment to do these things and stick to them.

Hopefully once you start using these ideas you won’t wonder how to get things done when you have no time to get things done, because you’ll actually find that you do really have the time to accomplish your goals.

What about you? Do you have any time savings tips? Already practicing these things? Share with us and let’s discuss it today.

Share this post with anyone you think could use this advice today or share with anyone you already know that is amazing at getting things done.

Recently I have grown bored with most of the paid stock photography sites. After I completed one of my recent posts, I sat back in my chair and just did not like the pictures I had in the post. I had a couple of choices for the future at this point; keep putting up with stock photos that I hated or actually find some good free stock photos that don’t look like stock photos for my websites!

So to do this, I had to do a little research and from that research, I put together a list of places that I’ve been getting some cool pictures from. I am going to share that with you, right now.

Here are the names of the sites which offer free stock photos that look amazing.

Cupcake

Unsplash

Foodiefeed

Gratisography

New old stock

Stock Up

Jay Mantri

Pexels

Travel Coffee Book

Mazwai

Pixabay

Now let me break down the rights to the following sites where you can get free stock photos that don’t look like stock photos – A.K.A. awesome stock photos. Click on any of the names to visit the site.

All the images provided by this website have been licensed by the creative commons (CCO) license. This means that you can utilize in virtually any way you wish, without having to incur any costs. I really love this site and enjoy the photography.

Unsplash is highly noted for offering high-resolution images that can be excellent for any project you might have in mind. Unlike most other alternatives, this royalty-free stock photos database is regularly updated, with 10 fresh images after every ten days. This is currently my favorite stock photo site of the group.

This website is solely dedicated to offering high-quality images that are food oriented. Foodiefeed provides an extensive database that runs in the hundreds of thousands in number. This is a great site if you run any type of food-oriented website.

Gratisography is another one of the very best stock photography website currently in existence. These images are categorized in several collective groupings, which consists of nature, animals, urban, objects and even whimsical.

This website’s uniqueness is the fact that it solely focuses on offering vintage images. All of which have been licensed under CCO. These are not my favorite and in many cases are not functional on most sites. However, this site may work perfectly for you.

Stock up is a highly acclaimed stock photo vendor. Essentially, this site provides a search tool, which users can utilize to access tens of thousands of quality images from dozens of online sources. I like many of the pictures here but some of them fall into the classic “look like a stock photo” mold. However, there are enough good looking photos here to add the site to my list.

This website provides numerous stock images, that have of course been licensed under the CCO act. Which means you can edit, modify or even use them with commercial motives, without having to spend a dime.

Pexels boasts a large collection of royalty-free images. These photos are categorized in different categories such as business, technology, people., vehicle, vintage, black & white to mention but a few.

This site was shared with me by my friend Kevin Riley. So far it’s a great looking resource. All of the pictures at this site are CCO as well. This allows you to use the pictures for any purpose.

The photo that you saw at the top of the page is a stock photo from Unsplash and here is another.

Looks like some awesome stock photography eh? It just doesn’t have that stock photography feel to it.

Let me know what you think. Do you like these sites? Are you using a different site that you love? Share it and I might add it to the list above. Enjoy making your site look much better with this stock photography that actually looks amazing.

Many beginners who are looking at building their own online business will ask me if they should follow their passion or simply chase after what’s hot and profitable at the time. I’ve even touched on this in the past when speaking of finding a niche market to make money in for yourself.

We all want to get into that hot niche market and get as many sales right away. However, my answer is always to go for the passion.

Now, I could end this lesson here and just say “Hey, go follow your passion! End of story!” but I can’t do that.

Why? Because the next question I’ll get from you is “How do I find what I am passionate about?”

To be completely honest this can be tough, it can be hard and it can be crippling for some.

I have been in dozens of niche markets, both new and old and I can tell you that without a doubt the markets that I have a passion in are the ones that make me the most money every single time.

I’ve struggled with finding my passions before and I’ll tell you that in the recent past I’ve pushed some of my passions off and chased the money first and it was a huge mistake.

There are a few reasons why we tend to make more money following the markets that we’re passionate about.

We actually like/enjoy/love what we’re doing

Holds our interest to follow through

Easier to discuss with people because you know something about it

Have you ever worked a job that you hated? I have! Even though you might work hard at something you hated, how likely would you be to continue doing something you hate? Probably not very likely?

This is the problem.

Because it doesn’t bring joy to us it’s easier to push away from it. This leads to lack of interest, friction and ultimately the point of giving up.

But, on the other hand, think about something you love in this world.

When you love something it brings you to life, strikes your soul and pushes you to strive for what you want to achieve.

When you love something you’ll think about it often.

This could be a hobby like:

Golf

Building models

Gardening

Baking/cooking/grilling

Sports

Fashion

Photography

And so on…

It could be something you’re already good at:

Past work

Current hobby (again)

Current work

A skill you understand very well

And so on

Now let me ask you this question. How easy is it for you to talk about these things? Does it bring you joy to discuss your passion? Do you find that having a conversation about these things to be much easier?

You’re likely saying yes right now.

If you’re not saying yes then maybe you simply haven’t found your passion yet. If you haven’t found it, there is still plenty of time. It doesn’t matter what age you are, because in this day and age we have the Internet with infinite amounts of information at our finger tips.

You could easily start by doing some research, investigating the topic and simply trying new things.

A Challenge

If you’re not doing something you’re passionate about right now I challenge you to do the following:

Grab a pen and paper (yes, it’s old school) and go into a quiet place.

Next….

Turn off the cell phone, Facebook, Twitter, Radio and TV. Start writing about what brings joy to your life.

You might find one thing or ten things, but I challenge you to write them all down.

Continue in deep thought and find out of those you’ve listed which one inspires you the most.

That just might be your passion.

But….

If nothing comes to mind write down something you’ve always wanted to try that you think might bring joy to your life.

What would be exciting or fun to learn/try?

Write these things down and keep them for yourself, then pursue learning about them. A simple search in any search engine will be enough to get you started.

Heck, you could even buy a book and read more about the subject.

Finish Strong

Then over the next 30 days make it a point to focus on learning the subject and seeing if it sparks a true passion in you.

If you end up with one passion or are lucky enough to have several these are the niche markets I believe you should pursue.

Have a question or comment? Do you know your passion yet? Let me know below!

If you know someone that this advice would help? Please share on social media wherever you can. Not only would I appreciate it, but I am sure they would as well!

Last year I added a segment to my Niche 60 course showing my members how to get on Instagram. I also show them how to get traffic and sales to their website from Instagram. Oddly enough I never get many questions from the students about it. This is a trend that happens with all “new” places on the Internet. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying Instagram is new, but, it has largely been ignored by many marketers.

The fact, that it is now picking up steam only means that we’re about to completely ruin it within the next couple of years. However, I think we can do some non spammy things that our audiences will like. Instagram is an extremely active place. In fact, for my niche markets the level of activity blows Facebook away.

I am going to show you what I’ve been doing recently, with great results.

My Experimenting With Instagram

First, I’ll be honest here. I have not been on Instagram very long and in fact, in some of my niche markets; barely at all. That’s all going to change quickly.

Like I normally do, I experiment with something before I’m ready to march and advocate for it heavily.

So about 5 months ago I set up an Instagram account in a niche market. The market was a new eCommerce store I setup about 1 year ago. This market also was new to me, I had no experience in it and it also had nothing to do with the eCommerce niche or affiliate marketing.

For the first 2 months I barely used the account. I simply added a few pictures here or there and followed a few other people in that same industry. I really didn’t see much movement or actually even “get it” for a little while.

It wasn’t until I really started looking at the platform that it clicked how people are using it and I was able to do some cool stuff.

Here is an example of what I have been doing, by showing you how Taco Bell is doing it.

I do spend a little more time entering longer messages to accompany each picture/video than they do.

But, large companies like Taco Bell have the benefit of brand awareness working in their favor that you and I do not have. I’ll cover more about my methods below.

Growth From Within Instagram

I began placing a picture on the account every 2-3 days. The pictures I decided to use were simply pictures of products that I sell inside of the eCommerce site. Keep in mind this can be done with affiliate marketing as used in Niche 60 as well and these products do not need to be your own.

Keep in mind for your own pictures you can also use clever memes and sayings. I’ve been doing it in some of my niche markets that I am involved in and it works but it’s not my favorite way. I simply prefer showcasing good products and including a little write up with it.

NOTE: Some people place pictures on several times per day, but I don’t think that it’s 100% necessary. Once per day or once every other day is probably enough. However, there is nothing wrong with putting up 5-10 pictures per day if you can keep up with it.

I noticed each time I placed a picture up people would “heart it” (hearting is basically saying you like it or love it) or commenting on it. Over the course of a few weeks I noticed a small spike in my website traffic coming from Instagram (I’ll show you how to track this in a future post as Google Analytics does not track it very well, yet).

Where I really saw a spike in traffic and even a ton of sales is by doing 3 things while also posting my own images up.

Hearting other pictures/videos in my niche. I’d simply do a search for the hashtags that made sense in my niche and then when I found cool pictures that I liked, I’d heart them. If you really want to get the picture creators attention heart 5-6 of their images and you’ll get out on their radar the easy way. The reason this works so well is because Instagram notifies you anytime someone follows you, hearts you or comments on one of your pictures.

Commenting on other peoples pictures/videos. Interacting is one of the best ways to gain new followers. When I comment on a pictures/videos I get a reply about 70% of the time. This starts a dialogue. I never try to sell anything during this but it gets the person curious as to what your account does. They may investigate you, which can easily lead to a new follower or sale.

Following people who are in my niche. When you follow someone it basically shows you like what they are posting. By doing this they are likely to check you out as well. This leads to traffic and, again, potential sales on your website.

Is Instagram Time Consuming For Promoting Your Business?

Look, I won’t sugar coat this, it’s going to take a little bit of time to use it. This is especially true if you’re in several niche markets because you’ll need to constantly switch between accounts. Since Instagram only works on your phone (right now) there is no trick to get around this.

But, because everything is so easy to navigate and use you can build up your followers and interactions while you watch TV, listen to a podcast, walk on the treadmill or while you’re at the doctors office waiting to be seen it only makes sense to just do it. Most days I spend less than 15 minutes in total on Instagram but I have some great results here.

My Results In 60 Days

So with one little niche market I was able to drive around 55 sales from Instagram with less than 1000 followers and with very little work. Over time I suspect this number will climb exponentially as I increase my followers and interactions. I also think if I would have focused more time and energy on Instagram I would have pushed more sales in that time frame.

It wasn’t all just about getting the short term sales though. There is something much bigger and much more important that Instagram helps you build.

Brand Awareness

One of the best things you can get is recognition for your brand; brand awareness.

This can be critical because as people learn about you, they may not be ready to buy something from you.

However, if you’re positioned as a great brand in your industry and someone is following you on social media, like Instagram, when it comes time to buy they are going to remember you.

Let’s say you had a website that sells aquaponic garden equipment and you followed the advice I mention above.

As time goes by and you gain followers and interact with those followers, release new pictures and videos on a regular basis and answer any questions when asked, you’re going to build up people that view you as an authority in your niche. This leads to sales, even if it’s in the future.

Go for the long term over the short term and don’t worry so much about immediate sales. If you have a good products and you’re doing these things the sales will come.

If You Can’t Put A Link In A Post On Instagram Then How Will People Find You?

One of the early things I foolishly avoided Instagram for was the lack of ability to put a link in a single post. The only place you can put a link is in your profile. This means for people to find your site they need to click your profile and then go visit you.

However, you can mention your profile when you post a picture or video when you leave text. So you could say something like “If this looks great, come see the product in all of it’s glory. Link is in profile.”

I rarely do this, but, it’s good to bring up every now and then when you gain followers.

I usually just include things like this with each post: “We’ve added this new product to our store. We think it looks amazing. Come visit us and see what you think.”

This is a way of promoting yourself without it looking like you’re promoting yourself. You’re simply stating your opinion about a product in your store and asking for opinions. This works on all forms of social media, not just Instagram and it works in virtually any niche market. It also doesn’t matter if you’re running an affiliate site or running an eCommerce store.

Promoting Your Business On Instagram This Way Won’t Cost You A Dime!

In fact, you won’t need to spend anything to do this. The only thing you’d ever need to spend any amount of money on is having someone creating the images for you. I’ve tried it and personally I like my images more because I understand my niche market more so than a graphic artist does.

A Little Homework And A Little Action

Getting started with Instagram is as easy as “just doing it” and then staying with it. Like anything, you’re not going to get an avalanche of traffic and sales from the start. It takes time and effort to grow it.

I HIGHLY suggest looking at what other companies are doing with Instagram to get some great ideas. By looking at what other companies are doing you can then gather ideas that might work for you. This will allow you to determine the best course of action for your company on Instagram.

Next, I suggest then looking at what other companies in your niche are doing. Often you’ll find many companies are not using it. It’s shocking and it reminds me of when businesses first ignored Facebook. Now it would seem insane to not have your business on Facebook. I feel like the same is soon to come for Instagram too.

Now, if you do see someone in your niche using it effectively or you notice they have thousands of followers and you are just starting, don’t get discouraged. In fact, you should have the opposite feeling in your stomach. They are there building up an audience for a reason!

You must realize that it’s working and that you need to be there too. From this point you can grow your account and start reaping the benefits.

What are your thoughts? Are you using Instagram yet? Tried it but not having any luck?

The internet is a complete goldmine for images and is saturated with so many great options that naturally begs the question: Why should I have to pay for images when I can just Google one?

Well, actually, without the consent of use and proper credits provided, using an image that is not yours or rightfully purchased by you, can become a matter of legal issues – especially for business owners using images on their website. So spending $1 or $2 for an image is not a bad idea.

In fact, every website I build, I buy all of my images for it.

Listed below are some great (and safe) options for you to acquire images that are both professional as well as cost effective:

My Go-To Place For Website Images….

As one of the top leading image banks, Fotolia provides instant access to over 47 million images, vectors, illustrations as well as video clips to meet the growing needs of your website. What we love most about Fotolia is that they are truly affordable and royalty-free images so you don’t have to worry about any legal issues of purchasing and using the images for personal or commercial use. For pricing and monthly package information, you’ll find that at the site.

However, I do not use their subscription based model and I simply buy credits as needed. This way I never need to spend more than I need on images for any given project.

Here Is A Simple Search Demonstration Of How Easy It Is To Find Images On Fotolia

It’s as simple as typing a search term in the search box and then adding the image to your cart.

Next, Image Site….

Think of it as an ever expansive picture library that enlists the work of talented artists, photographers and designers to bring you some of the most appealing and visually stunning pictures you’ve ever seen. For as low as $40 per month, you can subscribe to get 10 images, click here for more information on various packages.

This is really similar to Fotolia but they do have some different images and packages.

Finally, One More Place…

If you’re looking for vector icons for your website, flaticon.com is a great resource for free vectors. With over 97 thousand vector icons to choose from, the site is full of great options.

Product Images Of Your Own Products

If you need to take good product pictures to show products on your website you’re going to need some help.

Personally, I outsource this because I am not a patient person.

However, if you’re patient and you like to take your own pictures (and you want to save money!) you can do this. The guy I follow for any camera related advice is this guy. He reviews cameras and techniques so you’ll want to follow him too.